


the day i tried to live

by thememoriesfire



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2012-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thememoriesfire/pseuds/thememoriesfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>15 years after Quinn Fabray and Beth Corcoran disappear from Lima without a trace, Finn Hudson comes across a girl at a show choir competition that … no, it couldn’t be.  … could it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	the day i tried to live

**Author's Note:**

> The Finn/Rachel in this is very much backdrop. It's a Finn piece, and one of the most messed up things I've ever contemplated or written. This was mostly put on paper about 3 days after I finished 'these strange steps' and I think I recognize now that I was just having some sort of breakdown. Even so: it's finished.

It was the necklace.  
  
He wouldn’t say he was the kind of man who had an eye for details, but there was something about a simple gold cross that had caught sunlight out on the football pitch all the time that had just _stuck_ with him.  
  
Even as he was pushing kids along, by their shoulders, to get backstage so they could go over their songs one last time and make sure everyone understood what their cues were, he couldn’t stop staring at that necklace, which was ridiculous.  
  
How many plain gold cross necklaces were there in the world?  
  
But then, the girl jutted up her chin and laughed--and her mouth was open, and her smile was wide--at something the boy next to her was saying, and then she looked right at him.  
  
Her eyes were that weird color that he’d never really known what to call, until Rachel had once commented on how her eyes were plain, and not a ‘hypnotizing, chameleon-like hazel’ like Quinn’s.  
  
It was the necklace, and those eyes.  
  
That, and the fact that even after fifteen years, not a day in his life passed where he didn’t wonder what the hell had happened to Quinn Fabray and Beth Corcoran.  It was kind of hard not to wonder, when the people he lived with hadn’t ever really moved on from April of their senior year of high school at all.  
  
No, most days, he woke up thinking _where the fuck are Quinn and Beth_?, and that was before he even ran into Puck and Rachel in the kitchen, talking but not really talking to each other.  They tried to spare him, by not bringing it up when he was around, but he _knew_ how they passed the time, even now.  It was with questions like, _where did she get the fake papers?  Where did she get the money she needed to run?  Where could a girl like Quinn even run_ to?  
  
It wasn’t until today, getting the _New Directions_ ready for their first go at Nationals in fifteen years, that Finn realized that maybe, he didn’t want an answer to any of those questions at all.  
  
…  
  
As he sat down in his designated seat, flanked on one side by a coach from some team from West Virginia and Rachel--she never missed a competition; she supported him without fail--on the other, he couldn’t help but think back to that day.  
  
There had been all the warnings in the world, now that he looked back on it, but at the time, he’d mostly just been thinking that Nationals were coming up and they hadn’t had any good original songs written yet.  Rachel had been gesturing about something--how they were a family, and should sing about that, but not make it all _Sister Sledge_ , whatever the fuck that meant (and really, fifteen years later he still didn’t know, but _Sister Sledge_ was irrevocably tied up with kidnapping in his mind now) and then, most of their lives had come to an abrupt halt.    
  
It had been April twenty fourth.  Four thirty five pm.  He’d been wearing a green polo shirt, and Rachel had been wearing a yellow dress with a blue ribbon on it, and her hair had smelled really good that day.  It had been April twenty fourth, and the door to the choir room had burst open and Shelby had ended all of their lives, with just a few words.  
  
“ _Where is she?  Where is Quinn?  Where is my baby?_ ”  
  
They’d been mere weeks away from graduating, and Puck had knocked over a chair and had shaken his head, saying she was _better_ now, she wouldn’t _do_ anything anymore, she _cared_ about Beth--  
  
“She cares about Beth, and she cares about _me_ ,” Puck had called out, violently.  
  
Even years later, Finn still sometimes caught him staring into his beer bottle a little too long, and it always looked like he was wondering why he’d ever been so stupid as to believe that Quinn Fabray had given a _shit_ about him.  
  
The worst part was that if Quinn showed up again, with a now teenage Beth in tow, he really wasn’t too sure that Puck would turn her in or tell her to take a fucking hike.  Puck’s sadness was overwhelming, even now.  And if having them both back would make him less sad...  
  
He’d never really understood that, why the fuck hating Quinn was so _hard_ \--she stole his _baby_ , she ruined everyone’s _lives_ \--but now, looking at a girl that he was convinced was little Beth Corcoran, singing a second solo in the Beatles’ _Let It Be_ , he wondered if his own feelings about the entire situation approximated hate at all.  
  
…  
  
Puck hadn’t wanted to believe it was happening.    
  
Mr. Schue had had the kind of look on his face that a broken man wore, almost immediately.  He’d seen it later, in Rachel’s dads, when they’d tried to get her to move on with her life, but it had started with Mr. Schue.  That guy had known, as soon as Shelby’s crying reached a hysterical pitch, that he’d _really_ dropped the fucking ball.  
  
Miss Pillsbury had seen Quinn _once_ , that year.  And she’d said that it was understandable that Quinn was floundering a little, after the last two years.  And they’d all just said, _oh, great_ , because ‘floundering’ was better than the alternative, which--nobody had really wanted to put into words what the hell the ‘alternative’ was, but they’d all agreed it would’ve been _bad_.  
  
Then, _bad_ had happened.    
  
Finn had thought that maybe, Quinn was losing the will to live, or something.  It sure had felt like that, throughout most of high school.  But then, by the end of April, most people wished that Quinn _had_ killed herself.  
  
They’d been too inwardly focused, too selfish, to really see what was going to happen, and nobody had wanted to admit that it was their fault, except they had all been able see it on Mr. Schue’s face.    
  
He’d been defeated, that day.  And he’d given up, just like that.  
  
It was the opposite of Rachel, who had never given up.  
  
Even now, she kept up the Beth memorial page.  Maybe it was for Shelby, but Finn thought it was mostly for her, that she checked for new comments every day, and told him about them.  Sometimes, he caught her looking at Facebook guiltily; like she was scouring through Facebook  profiles to see if she maybe could match a baby she’d barely ever even met to a teenager.  
  
It was probably at least a little for Shelby, if he was honest.  As much as Rachel didn’t like Shelby, Rachel didn’t think _anyone_ deserved this, and with Shelby in the hospital and all...  
  
There was also the part of Rachel that he suspected just wanted to be able to say that _she_ had been right, all along.  She’d been _right_ to be so worried about Quinn quitting Glee, that second time, and she’d been _right_ to yell at him and Puck that they couldn’t just let her distance herself, and she’d been right, most of all, to tell Puck that he was a fool for letting Quinn distract him with a relationship she _clearly_ wasn’t ready for.  
  
Puck had called Rachel a bitch, the day she’d spoken those words to him, out on the football pitch in the pouring rain, three days after Quinn dyed her hair brown and--  
  
He still couldn’t really think about everything they _could_ have seen coming because he just hadn’t been looking, and he didn’t want to feel like shit over not taking responsibility over something that wasn’t his to be responsible for.  
  
That didn’t even make any sense, but the reality of it had been that a lot of people had felt responsible for Quinn, and he’d felt responsible for a lot of people.    
  
Rachel had wanted to save Quinn, and because of that, Rachel was still in Lima now.  They didn’t talk about that, but she’d turned down Tisch because they’d all thought that Quinn would come back, sooner rather than later.  And how would anyone help her if nobody was waiting for her, back home?  
  
In the end, he’d done what he could, for everyone broken by that day.  
  
He visited Shelby with Rachel, and brought her flowers from the best florist in town, while Rachel held her hand and talked to her about anything but the baby she’d lost.  
  
He let Puck live in his guest bedroom, after he and Rachel got married.  Puck drank a lot, sometimes, and disappeared for days at a time sometimes, but he always came back because Finn had given him a home.  He’d done what he could, there, and as for Rachel...  
  
She didn’t sing anymore.  It was because she didn’t sing anymore that he’d married her, when they were nineteen, and that he’d divorced her, when he was twenty nine.  Ten years without Rachel singing, and her eyes getting more and more tired, and hushed conversations to Puck about Beth and Quinn that she thought he didn’t know about.  
  
He loved her, but he also wasn’t a liar, and--  
  
They weren’t happy.  Nobody was happy after that day, but they tried, and there were days when Rachel’s smile wasn’t sad.  Like she wasn’t thinking about how hard they’d all dropped the ball back then, even for a few minutes at a time.  He had to keep believing that those would keep coming; and maybe one day, they’d stay.  
  
They’d been divorced for three years now, and one of these days he thought she might actually burst into song again, and maybe once she got that first note out, she’d actually start thinking about the city again.  
  
She wouldn’t ever go if the city brought terrible, terrible things, though, like Beth Corcoran singing a Beatles medley.  
  
...  
  
His kids, the _New Directions_ , were up next, and he reached for Rachel’s hand and held it tightly, as they performed their little hearts out.  
  
Two rows behind him, a now-teenage baby he’d once thought was his sat down next to what he thought was probably her boyfriend--had to be, really, because the guy had the build of a quarterback and Beth was obviously a cheerleader of some kind, the way she’d pulled her hair up into a tight pony after the performance--and softly talked about whatever was going on on stage.  
  
He wondered if she was vicious, like Quinn.  If she was sitting there tearing apart good kids who were trying hard, just because she could.  Or maybe, she was just uncaring, the way Puck had been at her age.  Maybe she was a bully just because she didn’t know any better.  
  
That could be said for a whole lot of people who used to know her mother, and he sighed and forced himself to focus on what was happening on stage.  Stacy Fitzgerald, his best singer by far, belted out a Barbra song that Rachel would’ve _killed_ , and he thought about all the things that would’ve been different if he’d just paid a little more attention back when everything was going _right_ for all of them.  
  
When he looked to his left, Rachel’s eyes were full of unshed tears, and he squeezed her hand tightly, even though he didn’t think it would help her at all.  She just didn’t sing anymore, and he could only think of one thing that would get her singing again.  
  
Beth’s choir was from Wisconsin.  Madison, to be exact, and he knew what school, and he could figure out how long the drive was, and he--  
  
Was Quinn _here_?  
  
He turned around in his seat and looked towards the back rows, where the parents were, but--Quinn had always been kind of ridiculously good at reinventing herself.  He had no idea what he was looking for, and maybe it was for the best, if she didn’t _see_ him looking, now.  
  
She’d disappeared on them all once.  Even if he had no idea what he was planning on doing, he couldn’t make her disappear again--and so when everyone else got up and applauded _New Directions,_ he stayed in his seat and thought about Jean Sylvester’s funeral, and if maybe that was when he could’ve prevented any of this from happening.  
  
Maybe.  Maybe not, but even so, he was going to Madison, and--  
  
Fuck, he had absolutely no idea what he was going to do once he got there, but he couldn’t _not_ go.  
  
Not when two people in his house were permanently living in the past and he had a real chance of just making them _stop_ it.    
  
God, he _owed_ them that much.  Didn’t he?  
  
…  
  
It was one of those days, when they got back.  
  
Puck was on the sofa watching a game and greeted them with a bottle, still smelling of the sand in the pit he worked at.  “How was it?”  
  
“Third,” Rachel said, rubbing at Finn’s back for a moment and then disappearing up the stairs.  
  
“Not bad,” Puck told him, and Finn smiled tightly and listened to the sounds of running water, upstairs.  Then, he headed for the fridge and grabbed his own lager; tugged at his tie, until it was loose around his neck, and sat down on the couch next to Puck.  
  
“No, they were good.  I think that the mash-up did it.  Mash-ups are always a hit,” he said, taking a slow sip and then looking at Puck.  “How are you?”  
  
Puck shrugged and looked back at the TV, where the Cavs were losing badly.  
  
It didn’t take long, for the crying to start; maybe thirty minutes.  After a moment of listening to it, and wondering how it could still hurt this much, given that it wasn’t uncommon at all, Finn took a deep breath and pulled on his tie again.  It caught under his vest, though, and getting it off just wasn’t a priority right now.  Rachel was.  
  
“I can get it,” Puck offered, but Finn shook his head.  
  
Rachel responded better to him when things got to be too bad for her.  She always had.  
  
He took the stairs two at a time, heading up the stairs and knocking on the bathroom door.  “Rachel?”  
  
“I’m naked,” she said, after a long moment.  
  
“I know, babe, but--I’ve seen it all before, so can I come in?”  
  
She didn’t protest, and he’d known her for so long that that was good enough.  The door handle squeaked when he depressed it, and then he saw her, knees pulled up to her chest, hair wet, and--fuck, the water was probably not nearly warm enough, because her teeth were chattering.  
  
“What’s wrong, baby?” he asked, sitting down on the floor next to the tub.  
  
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together, which was good.  Sometimes, when she got like this, she couldn’t even manage being annoyed with him.  He offered her the beer after a moment, and she took a sip before handing it back.  
  
“It was just a lot.  All those choirs...” she finally said, and then shook her head.  
  
He knew what she meant.  She didn’t have to elaborate, and he watched her for a moment.  God, she was beautiful. Even older, and so much more tired than she should be, and no longer shining on stage, she was so beautiful.  
  
He wanted to make her shine again.  So badly, and so he bit his lip and almost, _almost_ told her to cross reference the _Sacred Hearts High School_ with _Madison, Wisconsin_ the next time she looked around Facebook, because it would help her not be like this anymore.    
  
But would it really?  
  
He needed more than just--the necklace, and the eyes.  He needed something real to give to her; something for her to hang on to, because just an idea wouldn’t fix anything at this point.  There had been fifteen years of ideas, and tips, and questions, and frequent visits from the police who promised that they weren’t giving up hope, yet.  
  
That was some lie, because Rachel and he both knew that if not for _them_ , everyone would have given up by now. Shelby could barely remember how to brush her own hair, and Puck drank so he didn’t have to think about it.  And Rachel....  
  
Rachel didn’t sing anymore, and didn’t need some fucking story about how he’d seen a girl that might’ve been Beth at a show choir competition.  She needed _more_ than that, and after a moment he said, “C’mere.”  
  
He gently pulled her to her feet and wrapped her in a towel, and then hugged her in close.  
  
Rachel had always been short, but she’d never felt small to him, in high school.  
  
These days, she was like a wounded little owl, awake at nights and not really capable of flying anywhere, and all he could do was tuck her in close and wait for her to say what she needed from him, right now.  
  
It was normally, “I’m hungry”, or “Please, Finn, can we just...”  
  
He wasn’t sure he had the energy for the latter, after that their long trip back from New York, and so when her stomach growled, he just kissed the top of her head.  “You want me to fix you something?”  
  
She nodded against him.  “I’m hungry.”  
  
“I’ll make you a cottage pie.  I know how you love those,” he said, and she smiled at their old joke; he’d once bought one for her because he thought it’d be a cute reference to the house they’d bought shortly after they’d gotten married, and she’d had to gently explain to him that there wasn’t a chance in hell she could eat it.  
  
She rubbed her knuckles against his chest, and then took a step back.  “Sure, Finn.  That sounds wonderful.”    
  
In a different life, one where the mother she didn’t talk to was raising her not-really-a-sister, they would be so goddamned happy together, but Rachel didn’t know how to _be_ happy anymore, and the most he could do was just stop her from slipping.  
  
“Love you,” he said anyway, pressing a kiss to her head.    
  
The divorce hadn’t stopped him from feeling it, and he’d only asked for a divorce after a week of finding her staring out the window while listening to old Barbra records on repeat, with such longing and loss on her face that it had felt like he was dying.  
  
It was meant to encourage her to go--and live her own life.  To learn to fly, again, but beyond the fact that her wedding ring now lay on her nightstand, permanently, nothing had really changed for either of them.  She was still stuck in their house, talking secretly to Puck about a child that they’d probably never seen again.    
  
Except maybe, she would.  Maybe--.  
  
“You too,” she sighed, and then stepped around him and disappeared into the bedroom.  
  
He knew he should probably be grateful that they’d been great together when they were married, and were still more or less great together now that they were divorced, but the entire situation just made him want to strangle the shit out of an eighteen year old girl that he’d never, ever be able to forgive for what she’d done.  
  
No matter _what_ he found in Madison, he was sure of that.  
  
…  
  
He pulled Puck aside, the next morning, and said, “Dude; I need you to--stay sober for a few days and look after Rach, okay?  You know she gets.”  
  
Puck looked at him darkly, and then went back to buttering his toast with mechanical movements.  “Why?”  
  
“I have--business.  Out of town,” Finn said, shortly.  “It’s to do with the club.”  
  
Puck glanced at him and said, “Does Rachel know about this?”  
  
“No.  I haven’t told her yet.  She’s sleeping in,” Finn said, softly.  
  
Puck shot him another look, and looked like he wanted to start protesting, and Finn just put down a hand on his shoulder.  “I know, it’s hard, when I’m not here.  I know I’m the only one that can deal with her when she gets in one of her moods, but--”  
  
“We’ll be fine.  And... fuck you, by the way. I’m not some _deadbeat_.  I pay rent, and I take care of Rachel just fine even when you don’t ask me to,” Puck said, his jaw working quietly for a moment.  
  
There were so many things in that statement that Finn didn’t feel like he knew how to deal with.  It was easier to just nod and say, “Yeah, man.  I know. I’m sorry.”  
  
“Where you off to?” Puck asked, after a moment.  
  
It was hard to predict when either of them would snap out of it and care about where he came and went to, and Finn found himself wishing that Puck wasn’t mostly sober this morning, and wasn’t mostly _lucid_ enough to ask.  
  
“I saw some kid perform at Nationals and I think--maybe we can offer her a scholarship, to come sing at McKinley,” he said, after a moment.  “I can talk to Principal Figgins, anyway, and--”  
  
Puck scoffed.  “Yeah.  Good luck getting money away from Sue Sylvester.”  
  
Finn lowered his eyes for a moment and said, “Actually, I’m pretty sure that after everything that happened, she’d give it to me if I just asked.  It wasn’t until after Quinn--”  
  
“Don’t,” Puck snapped.  A second later, he flipped his plate of toast over, and then kicked at it when it tumbled to the ground, and then finally just dug his fingers into his eyes for a long moment while taking harried breaths.  
  
Finn didn’t move.  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to--”  
  
“I _know_.”  
  
They stood in silence for a moment, until Rachel’s alarm clock went off downstairs, and like it did almost every day now, _Break My Stride_ just made Finn want to fucking start crying.  
  
There wasn’t much of a stride left to break, in any of them, and when Puck ran his sleeve past his nose roughly and then bit out, in a voice that was much higher than his normal voice, “You know what, fuck it.   _Say_ her fucking name.  It’s been fifteen years, I’m sick and tired of pretending that--”  
  
“Puck--”  
  
“No, you know what?  This has been going on _long_ enough.  Let’s _talk_ about her.  Let’s just actually talk about what that _bitch_ did to us when he left, because I don’t know how much longer I can keep pretending that everything is _fine_ , Finn.  It’s _not_ fine.”  
  
Somewhere, upstairs, a loud gasp sounded, and then the bathroom door shut.  
  
Puck was shaking, and looked like he was close to throwing up at the same time, and Finn felt his eyes burn; but he wasn’t dumb enough to reach out to Puck, when Puck was like this.  The last time he’d tried, he’d lost a molar and ended up in the hospital to get some stitches that had given him a scar that his kids called his pirate scar, even though it was a little too small to be awesome.  
  
Puck eventually dropped his shoulders, and then burst into tears.  
  
Finn let him cry, and then let Puck clutch at him, and then wondered what kind of man it made him that he was almost looking forward to going to Madison, because there at least he could say Quinn’s name without the entire fucking household going into nuclear meltdown.  
  
…  
  
After all these years, the only thing he could think anymore was that Rachel had lost a little part of her mind, that day.  
  
Puck’s grief was the kind that made sense.  He hurt, a lot and pretty much all the time, because Quinn had taken his _kid_ and disappeared with her, and every day Puck had to wake up with no idea if Beth was okay.    
  
In the early days, Finn had spent a lot of time reading about what to do when things like this happened, except there were no real manuals on how to make your best friend and girlfriend feel better about your ex-girlfriend kidnapping your best friend’s baby, and so the closest he’d come was thinking back to that funeral again, and how Coach Sylvester had needed _time_ to become evil as fuck again.  
  
She’d been grieving, and that was what you did when things actually ended.  
  
For Puck, this would never end, because there was always a maybe, and so Puck drinking and whoring around and not sleeping a lot all just kind of made sense.  It wasn’t the kind of thing that needed fixing, because there wasn’t anything _broken_.  Puck kept himself going, but of course he wasn’t ever going to move _on_.  
  
He couldn’t do that until Beth was found.  Alive _or_ dead, really.  Either one would get him to snap out of it, and until then, it made sense he was stuck where he was.  
  
There wasn’t any such thing he could tell himself about Rachel, because how broken Rachel was just didn’t make sense.  She and Quinn had been kind of friends, near the end, but that didn’t really explain why she still wasn’t singing.  
  
It could be worse, but it wasn’t great.  It hurt like hell, seeing her just not recover, even though she was so much better than Shelby.  Sometimes, the only thing that could stop Shelby from screaming was seeing Rachel.  It was on those days that Rachel’s eyes actually looked like they were seeing something in the _now_ , rather than the past.  
  
They were few and far between, though, and fixing Shelby always made Rachel worse for a little while.  Worse to the point where she didn’t even sit around watching black and white movies in which nobody had children, anymore.  Worse to the point where he had to go and feed her in bed, like he’d had to that one time she had tonsilitis in high school and could only eat ice cream.  
  
She’d whined a hell of a lot over the course of that week, and it hadn’t really seemed worth it at the time.  How things changed, though.  He’d give fucking anything to get _that_ Rachel back, now.  
  
He’d tried therapy with her, for a while, but she was always fine in therapy and then dead inside again as soon as they came home.  In therapy it was all so _rational_ sounding; no, I’m happy in Lima, and I’m happy giving singing lessons to adults and our marriage is great.  
  
In therapy, Rachel sounded fine and he ended up looking nuts for dragging her in, and she’d not say a thing to him on the drive back, and would then disappear up to her music room and stare out the window for the better part of whatever was left of the day.  
  
Rachel just wasn’t okay, anymore.  He loved her, in ways that _nobody_ even thought he should anymore, but she wasn’t going to get any better unless something changed.  
  
This trip to Madison might just be that thing; for her, _and_ for Puck.  
  
Even if it wasn’t, though, with answers, Puck might be able to finally start moving on--there was something about five steps, he’d read about it years ago--and that would give him the time to focus on Rachel, and to give her the attention he’d need to to get her better.  
  
He took a deep breath, and turned on the radio, but Journey stared playing as soon as he found his favorite classics station, and that was the last thing he needed right now.  
  
It was time to call home and promise Rachel he was okay, anyway--she worried if he didn’t, whenever he had to leave town, and none of them wanted to think of anyone else as missing, _ever again_ \--and so he pulled over on the side of the road and hit _home_.  
  
…  
  
In retrospect, he maybe should’ve flown in.  
  
Except he liked the idea of being able to leave whenever.  It was why, no matter how tight things were, he’d always kept a car in good shape.  
  
Sometimes, he just drove out to the town limits and sat there for a long time, wondering what life was like when it was bigger than just Lima.  
  
Whenever he passed the Lima limits, he always felt a sense of relief, like he was getting out of some sort of death trap that he didn’t even remember getting into.  His mom stopped asking him if he didn’t want to go live somewhere else, with less bad memories, years ago.  
  
All too soon, however, the relief always turned into guilt, and he’d head back home.  
  
This was everything he knew.  The fact that he hated it, a lot of the time, didn’t really change that, and the few breaks he got--because of Glee, now that he had a good group of kids that went to competitions a lot--were usually more than enough.  
  
This was bigger than that, and even though he made sure his phone battery was charged and the country station on the radio wasn’t turned up so loud that he couldn’t hear if anyone called him, he mostly just felt really fucking alive, as soon as he actually left Ohio.  
  
Even with traffic, these were just eight hours that he was going to get to spend somewhere _else_ , without any real reminders that things back home were not okay.  
  
Eight hours seemed like they’d be enough time to come up with at least some sort of plan of what he wanted to do when he got to Madison, and it was with that starting point that he unwrapped one of the baloney sandwiches he’d brought--and that Rachel didn’t talk to him about the way she used to, because she didn’t really notice things like that anymore--and dug in.  
  
…  
  
Most of the Midwest was supposed to be more or less the same, in that it was where people farmed and lived out in the country a lot, with the occasional city looming on the horizon like it was mostly just there to give people something to strive for.  
  
He passed Fort Wayne, first, and then Gary, Indiana--and he thought it like that, but couldn’t pinpoint why it needed the state--and then Chicago.  Chicago was one of those cities that Rachel used to talk about, back when she’d still been thinking that Quinn would come back and Quinn would need support, of some kind, but she’d be able to supply it if she wasn’t that far gone.  
  
“Chicago isn’t that far,” she’d say, curled up on his chest, toying gently with one of the buttons on his polo shirt.  “It’s--I could be home quickly, if I needed to.”  
  
“You could,” he’d agree with her, and her finger would keep rubbing at the fabric of his shirt, until it eventually stopped, and she’d sigh, and it would be the end of another dream.  
  
Her dreams had kept getting smaller, with every year, until now.  Now, he was pretty sure that the only thing Rachel dreamed of anymore was April twenty fourth in their senior year of high school.    
  
It was like a television he could never turn off.  
  
…  
  
By the time he actually made it to Madison, it was nearly eight in the evening, and he punched in directions to a Motel Six on the outskirts of town.    
  
Even now, he tried not to eat meat for dinner around Rachel.  It was hard enough to get her to eat at all, but somehow the sight of meat (and especially bacon) usually ended up with her crying silently and putting her fork down with a soft, “Excuse me.”  
  
He didn’t like bacon anymore--but, he could admit that every once in a while he just loved eating  a steak, and so after putting his bag into his room and twirling the key around his finger at least once, he headed out to a Denny’s.  
  
Five cups of coffee later, and the battery on his phone mostly drained, he had directions to Beth’s school--still in session, just like McKinley, except nobody really gave a damn about where the music teacher went after he’d scraped together a third place at Nationals, so he’d called in sick and Principal Figgins told him to take a week, like he was still the glory boy he’d once been--and a few things that he figured he could do without necessarily... talking to her.  
  
Talking to her just seemed like it would be a really bad idea, right now, and as he topped his coffee up for the sixth time, and then ordered a plate of scrambled eggs for what was going to be a real fucking early breakfast, he thought mostly about what _Quinn_ would have done, in this situation.  
  
“If you want anything from your peers, you have to figure out what makes them tick,” she’d said, once, before straightening his collar and looking at him with a kind of intensity that scared him a little.  “We’re not going to win this campaign unless you understand _what_ people are voting for, and we’re _not_ universally liked even though we’re both accomplished and attractive.  Find out what clubs people are in, because that is how we get to them.  I don’t even care if I have to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons, we _will_ get the unpopular vote somehow--”  
  
He thought about Lucy Caboosey, and how little Beth Corcoran hadn’t been the skinniest girl, even though she’d been pretty enough (in a way where, he couldn’t really talk about her like that because she was a _baby_ , and then she also looked a lot like his best friend, but still).  He wondered if that was something that Quinn--  
  
He didn’t wonder, actually.  He just drank his coffee and thanked Jesus that no high school in the country in a decent district actually gave a shit about who strolled into the library to look at yearbooks.  
  
If he had to, he could say he was an alumnus whose house had burned down in a fire, or something.  
  
(Quinn would be proud, that he came up with that on his own.)  
  
…  
  
His eyes were bloodshot.  
  
He looked like Puck did, most mornings, when he headed into the bathroom at his motel room with his toiletries kit.  If that kind of thing didn’t get Puck sacked from his job at the sand pit, though, it probably wouldn’t get him to be stared at overly much at this upper class high school he was about to gatecrash.  
  
He wasn’t surprised, really, that when he’d googled Sacred Hearts he’d learned it was in some rich part of town.  It was what Quinn would’ve wanted for Beth.  Anything but a Lima loser.  Anything but a Lima loser raised by Lima losers.  
  
She’d reinvented herself for real, this second time.  Lucy Caboosey wasn’t a country club kid, and Quinn Fabray had made herself look--he couldn’t really think of the word.  Like she was _city-_ like.    
  
It wasn’t until his phone rang, mid-shave, that he remembered.  Cosmopolitan.  Rachel had called Quinn cosmopolitan once upon a time, before Quinn had lost her marbles completely and had done what she did.  
  
Sometimes, he honestly thought that there was a part of Rachel that now worshipped Quinn more than ever, because in a small portion of her mind, Rachel couldn’t help but think of Quinn as someone who got _out_.  
  
That made him feel sick, though, deep down into his bones, and so he answered his phone and said, “Hey, babe, how are you?”  
  
“I’m good,” Rachel said, in a tone of voice that indicated that she at least hadn’t started a black and white movie yet.  “The house is so empty without you here.  I don’t think Noah came home last night.”  
  
“That _dick_ ,” Finn sighed.  “I’m sorry.  I told him to take care of you.  Did you eat?”  
  
“He came home before he left again, and we made pasta together,” Rachel said.  “It was good, but not as good as your linguine.”  
  
“Do you have any lessons today?” Finn asked, before slathering some toothpaste onto his toothbrush.  He didn’t trust himself to shave when on the phone with Rachel, but the least he could do was _something_ , to get him moving.  
  
This wasn’t the kind of thing where he could do whatever he wanted to, for however long.  He had responsibilities.  He brushed hard, and spat when Rachel said, “Yeah, I think so.  I think--later this afternoon, honey.”  
  
“Check the fridge calendar,” he reminded her, and she laughed softly--only thing she really did that was still musical--and said, “Right, the calendar.  That’s where we keep these things, because our heads are sieves.”  
  
He didn’t respond, but he got it.  It was hard to remember _today_ when every part of you was stuck on _April twenty four_ , but if he told her that she’d just feel like she was letting him down somehow, and that so wasn’t the point.  
  
“No big,” he said, instead, and gargled for a moment.  
  
“Ew.   _Finn_ \--did you just gargle at me?” she laughed, and he felt his mouth actually hurt when he smiled.    
  
“Sorry; just trying to keep my teeth clean.”  
  
“Well, I suppose it’s nothing I haven’t heard before,” she said, with a soft sigh.  “Can I ask a serious question?”  
  
“‘course, Rach.  Always.”  
  
She took a deep breath and then softly asked, “Why are you really on this trip?”  
  
He hesitated, and then said, “What do you mean?”  
  
“It’s okay, you know.  You’re … you’re an adult.  And so are we.  If we’ve been crowding you--”  
  
Rachel at her most lucid hurt the most of all, and he capped his toothbrush and paste and put them both back in his toiletries bag before looking in the mirror, at his half-shaved face and his blood-shot eyes, and did the right thing.  
  
“I don’t need a break from anything, Rach.  You know I love you.  I love our house, and our life, and cooking for you and watching movies with you.  Hell, I even love that dick we live with, most of the time.”  
  
Rachel was silent for a long moment, and then she whispered, “Sometimes I wish things were different, for all of us.”  
  
“Things are fine,” he told her.  “Okay?”  
  
“Okay,” she said, and in the background, the click of a laptop mouse sounded.  
  
He hung up before he could say out loud what he was thinking: _oh, thank God, you’re slipping away again_.  
  
He wanted her to get better, but aware wasn’t better.  It was just depressing, and so he picked his razor back up and tried to make himself look less grizzly.  
  
Sometimes, he actually forgot he was a man, now.  His five o’clock shadow was as good a reminder as the bills he paid and the food he put on the table, and days like today, he just really needed to remember that fifteen years had passed.  
  
He took a deep breath, and washed his cheeks clean of cream, and then nodded at himself in the mirror.  Fifteen years had passed, and Beth was sixteen now.  That made her a sophomore, so what he needed was last year’s yearbook.  She would’ve been a freshman, then, just like Quinn had been when they’d first started dating.  
  
That didn’t really mean anything, but it stuck with him the entire drive anyway.  
  
…  
  
Her name was Audrey Mitchell.  
  
She was a cheerleader, and on the miniature trampoline team, and also a debater.  
  
He looked at her face for a long time, and its slightly rounded cheeks and the way her smile didn’t quite seem to reach her eyes.  
  
Then, he closed the yearbook, and walked right past the librarian without even looking at her, and headed out to the parking lot.  
  
He threw up, once he was out there, because it had been--a fucking _idea_ before.  Spending ten minutes of his life staring at Audrey Mitchell, _nee_ Beth Fabray slash Corcoran, he knew that this wasn’t just an idea anymore.  
  
It took him another five minutes to feel calm enough to check in on Rachel, who just wanted to know when he was coming home.  
  
“Soon.  This’ll all be over soon,” he said, because he knew now that it would be.  
  
…  
  
It was past four, when Audrey finally surfaced from the building.  
  
He’d considered going over and talking to her between classes, but a thirty two year old man leaning up against a sixteen year old’s locker was just never going to fly.  
  
Instead, he’d spent the time in his car, legs at angles in the back seat, and he’d come up with a few questions to ask.  This wasn’t going to be as straight forward as, well, just going up to her and being like, _is your mother some lady named Quinn who napped you when you were a toddler?_  
  
She wouldn’t _know_.  
  
Beth’s name was no longer Beth.   Beth’s birthday was no longer Beth’s birthday, if Quinn had any smarts about her at all, and he knew Quinn.  He knew how smart she was, when it came down to it.  He’d always been a little sad that she’d had no interest in Call of Duty because she would’ve killed at it.  He and Puck used to play it balls to the walls, just lobbing grenades into buildings and running after those.  
  
Quinn would’ve been a great rooftop snipers, because she sure did manage to take all of them out on April 24th, without _any_ of them noticing.  
  
Some days, he woke up and he swore he could still smell--  
  
But then he’d just go downstairs and make some vegan pancake batter, because Rachel needed the reminder that things were normal, and different, and _not bad_.  
  
He looked down at his list of questions again, and realized that none of them were going to fly at all. He was going to come across as a fucking creep unless he just lied through his teeth, and so that was what he was going to do.  
  
If there was any justice in the world, flattery would get him everywhere with Quinn’s daughter, just like a _you’re not fat_ had brought her into the world.  
  
…  
  
Audrey Mitchell stared at him with a haughty expression.  
  
“Hi,” he said, jamming his hands into his pockets.  “I don’t mean to scare you or anything, but--”  
  
“You were at Nationals, this weekend,” she said, tilting her head.  
  
He nodded.  
  
“Weren’t you with that team from Ohio that got third?” she asked.  
  
He smiled faintly, and worked through his lines; years of rehearsing them with Rachel, back when she’d still done community theater, made it easier than he’d thought it would be.  “My wife coaches them.  I actually work in the music industry, myself.  Sometimes I like to go with her to these competitions to scout.”  
  
Audrey Mitchell’s hazel-chameleon eyes narrowed at him for a moment, and then she sort of held up a hand to her girlfriends, who scattered after a moment.    
  
Briefly, Finn thought that it couldn’t possibly be this simple to start an unbelievable conversation with a teenage girl; and as if to prove him right, Audrey laughed and said, “Do I look retarded?”  
  
“I’m--sorry?” he asked, involuntarily taking a step back.  
  
“You’re in the music industry and you live in _Ohio_?”  
  
Oh.  
  
He grinned a little sheepishly and said, “ _She_ lives in Ohio.  I live in New York.”  
  
Audrey raised her eyebrows at him, scrunching up the skin on her forehead, and--God, he had to look away for a second.  It was fucking _uncanny_.  
  
“What kind of marriage are you in where you live in New York and she lives in Ohio?”  
  
“We travel a lot,” he said, and jammed his hands into his pockets.  “Anyway--”  
  
“You know, if you want people to _believe_ you’re in the music industry, you might want to try looking less like a geometry teacher,” she told him, but she was sort of smiling a little now, and he chuckled and said, “I am _from_ Ohio.  This is just kind of what we look like down there.”  
  
She hesitated, and for a second he thought this was the end of it; she’d entertained the idea that he was a creep and dismissed _that_ , but also entertained the idea that he did actually work in the music industry and dismissed _that_.  
  
Quinn would’ve been skeptical as hell.  Back when they’d been dating, they’d gone to the mall in Columbus from time to time, and every time they’d gone she’d been approached by some skeezy older guy who’d promised he could turn her into a model.  
  
Her disgust at this offerings hadn’t really made any sense until he’d found out about Lucy, but--there’d always been a part of him that had thought that she’d secretly liked it, a little.  Like it had made it okay, that she hadn’t always looked like that.  
  
Like people were seeing her for what she _really_ should’ve looked like all along.  
  
“Your voice is really, really solid,” he said to Audrey, pushing a little, before she could excuse herself with a smile.  
  
She rolled her eyes a little and said, “I’m nasal.”  
  
“You’re not.  They’re just making you sing in a pitch that’s too high or too low for you, but you have this--warmth to your voice that’s really sweet.  It’s really throwback, to the 60s.  You have the kind of voice that could let you sing songs at boys, and they’ll know they can’t have you, but they want you all the more, because you’re untouchable,” he said.  
  
It was hard not to think of that duet Quinn and Rachel had sang together, during that whole nose debacle.  He’d railed on Quinn _hard_ , during all of that, because Rachel’s nose was and always had been perfectly fine; and she’d just slapped him and told him to figure out which one of them he wanted to fuck and which one of them he wanted to _marry_ , because he couldn’t have both.  
  
He’d chosen right, but sometimes, he wondered if a different choice would’ve--  
  
He focused on Audrey again, and the smile that curled around her lips seemed more real now. Like that time he’d told Quinn that there’d been fireworks, almost, and he glanced at the ground and then looked up at her again.  
  
“Look, I don’t want to--do anything that’ll freak you out, or anything, but--maybe we can go grab a coffee someplace public.  You can take your car, and I’ll take mine, and there’ll be people around.  You know there’s this Denny’s--”  
  
“I know where it is,” Audrey said, jutting her chin out again.  “Why should I go with you to grab coffee?”  
  
“Music’s a guaranteed way to get a good scholarship for college.  If you figure out a way to talk to your coach--who _is_ your coach?” he asked.  
  
Audrey shrugged and pulled her bag higher up on her shoulder.  “I can work with them, so that’s not really important.”  
  
He smiled faintly.  “I just--wanted to give you some tips.  You have potential.  I’m not going to give you any lines about how I have a record label and I want to sign you, but there’s something about you that’s _different_.”  Yeah.  Like how she had a broken father in Lima, and a bitch mother who was a criminal.  “You should just--work with that, and get a free ride to a good college out of it, if you can.”    
  
She looked at him seriously, and he tugged at his tie.  Then, she rocked back on her heels and said, “What’s your name?”  
  
He hesitated, and then said, “Noah Puckerman.”  
  
She didn’t give off a single sign of recognition; just snorted, and said, “Yeah, it would be something that square, wouldn’t it?”  
  
God help him, he kind of liked her.  
  
But then he’d also always kind of liked Quinn, back then.  
  
…  
  
Audrey drank her coffee black.  
  
It was probably a phase, but it kind of made him smile anyway.  She was the opposite of a rebellious child, with privilege basically dripping off her, but obviously she was looking to make herself seem a little edgier anyway.  
  
“Have you had any singing lessons?” he asked, when it was clear that she wasn’t going to start talking to him, and he’d have to somehow blend the lies and the truth together here until he got some answers.  
  
Audrey’s nails, a pale pink, tapped against the side of her mug, and she shook her head.  “No.  My mother thinks singing is a waste of time.”  
  
Finn stared at the table for a long moment and then said, “She does?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s like--whatever.  It’s dumb.  She doesn’t think I should be anything that isn’t like, working or getting ready to go to an Ivy, and she also really hates musicals so--”  
  
It was hard to keep breathing steadily, throughout this onslaught, but Finn took a careful sip of his own double-creamer coffee and then looked at her.  “What about your dad?”  
  
Audrey’s lips twisted bitterly.  “Don’t have one.”  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“Nah, I mean, I never knew him.  My mom says he was a deadbeat.  I mean, she was still in high school when I was born so I don’t know _how_ she gets off calling anyone a deadbeat when she was basically a statistic, but whatever.”  
  
Finn looked out the window and said, “I never knew my dad, either.”  
  
“No?”  
  
“No, he died in... he was in the military.  He got shipped off when I was just a baby and then never came back,” Finn said, scratching at his cheek for a moment.  
  
Audrey gave him a semi-sympathetic look, but it was clear she didn’t really care, because the subject wasn’t _her_.  That was another one in the Quinn column, right there.  
  
“Do you and your mom not get along, then?” he finally asked.  It was on topic.  It wouldn’t be too weird, to put it out there like that.  
  
Audrey scoffed after a moment and said, “That’s an understatement.”  
  
“Sucks,” he offered.  
  
She shrugged.  “I can’t help that she’s a bitch.  I mean, the upside is that she works like, three jobs and is never around.  I basically just do what I want to and like, two years from now I’m out of here.  I don’t know why anyone’d want to stay in Madison.  I’m off to like--LA.  Somewhere glamorous.”  
  
“With a music scholarship,” Finn said, after a slight pause.  “If you’re lucky.”  
  
Audrey relaxed, in the barest of ways, and her nails clacked against the mug again.  “Yeah.  Let’s talk about that.”  
  
…  
  
It was surprising, how much crap he remembered from Rachel’s endless discussions with Mr. Schue throughout sophomore year; it wasn’t as if he hadn’t had bigger things going on then, with the baby that wasn’t his but he’d thought was his, but somehow this all had filtered into the back of his mind anyway.  
  
He outlined things she could be doing, to make herself stand out; and things she really had to be doing, to make sure the right people noticed.  He talked to her about a website presence, and only felt a little bit guilty about the fact that she was no Rachel and would never really kick it that far with her voice.    
  
“Do you play any instruments?” he asked her, and after a moment she nodded.  
  
“Guitar.  My mother hates it, of course, but I don’t care.  I paid for the thing myself, y’know, from babysitting, and I usually play with headphones on so whatever.  It’s not like she _has_ to hear it.  She just bitches about it a lot because again, it’s not going to get me into a good college.”  
  
Finn felt his jaw tighten, and then said, “You any good at it?”  
  
“Yeah,” Audrey said, simply.  
  
“Stick with it.  It’s an easier scholarship bet than voice, but if you can do both you’re--yeah.  You’re looking really good,” he said, before glancing down at his mug and then shoving it towards the center of the table.  
  
Audrey looked at him carefully for a long moment, and then said, “Why are you really here?  I mean, not that I don’t appreciate all of this advice but like, you live in New York, or Ohio.  This isn’t exactly around the corner.”  
  
The room suddenly felt really small to him, but he breathed through it and remembered the website; the questions, the pointers that Rachel fastidiously updated, and the empty beer bottles that Puck crated in the garage, and the way that--  
  
He licked at his lips, briefly, and then said, “This is going to sound crazy.”  
  
Audrey rolled her eyes, like she was telling him that crazy was kind of par for the course in terms of today’s previous events, and he laughed wryly before rubbing at his head.  
  
“I--I think I might’ve gone to high school with your mom.”  
  
Audrey said nothing for a very long time, and then exhaled a soft, “Oh.”  
  
“I--I mean, we’ll have to--talk about this, more, but--my ex-girlfriend, in high school, had a baby when she was sixteen and then left town, when we were graduating.”  He hesitated, and then added, “I think... a lot of us have wondered what happened to her and... I mean, do you _look_ like your mother?  Because--you kind of... you kind of look like my ex-girlfriend, the way I remember her.”  
  
“What’s her name?” Audrey asked.  
  
Finn shook his head.  “I--she didn’t want to be found.  She will have changed her name.  I guess the--”  
  
“Yeah, I look like her,” Audrey said, quietly, and then sighed.  “I don’t know--where she’s from.  She doesnt talk about the past.  She doesn’t--”  
  
“Shit,” Finn said, without meaning to, and then cover his mouth with his hand.  
  
After a moment, Audrey laughed, and said, “Shit is _right_.”  
  
They didn’t say anything for a few minutes, and then Audrey tightened her ponytail and said, “She was... sixteen, when she had me.  How old was--”  
  
“Sixteen,” he said, and closed his eyes.  “Quinn was sixteen.”  
  
“Quinn,” Audrey repeated.  
  
Finn nodded slowly, and then said, “Audrey Hepburn was her favorite actress.  Her--she named her daughter Beth, initially, but after she left--”  
  
Slowly, but surely, the reality of the conversation was starting to set in, and Audrey’s mouth trembled, and she laughed again.  “This is so fucked up.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Finn said, helplessly.  “I didn’t know what to do, when I saw you and thought that you _might_ be her.  We’ve wondered for fifteen years what the hell happened to the both of you and--just on the _chance_ that you’re--”  
  
Audrey covered her mouth, hiding the tremble, and then got up from the seat and said, “I need some air.”  
  
Finn watched her go, and finished the rest of his coffee quietly, because--she’d be back.  How could she _not_ come back?  
  
…  
  
He ordered another steak, and ordered her a vegetarian ravioli that reminded him he needed to check in on Rachel; and so he left her at the table for a moment and called home, and promised Rachel that everything was fine and made sure _she_ was fine.  
  
“I miss you,” Rachel said, and he looked at the girl sitting at his table, with her shaking hand and her half-finished dinner, and said, “Won’t be long now.  I promise.”  
  
Rachel let him go, after that, and he sat back down across from Audrey, who looked at him for the first time in hours.  
  
“Do you know who my dad is?” she then asked.  
  
Finn swallowed thickly, and then said, “Yeah.  Yeah, I do.”  
  
Audrey’s eyes glazed over, and then she stared at her dinner and said, “Can--do you have his number, or something?  Can I call him?”  
  
Finn took a deep breath and said, “I think--he’d probably have a heart attack.  It’s been fifteen years, Beth.  It’s--”  
  
“Yeah, don’t call me that.  I mean, it might be my name but it’s not my name.  It’s--”  
  
“He plays the guitar.  Really well, actually.  Plays the guitar and you--you kind of have his nose, I think.  You definitely don’t have your mother’s.  Do you?”  
  
Audrey touched it, immediately sensitive, and then sort of sighed and said, “No.  I don’t.  She thinks I’m too young for a nose job but--”  
  
“She’s one to talk.  She had one when she was thirteen,” Finn said, rolling his eyes.  
  
Audrey looked at him carefully, and then her lips slowly stretched into a smile.  “You kind of hate her, don’t you?”  
  
He didn’t say yes, but as he carefully cut off another strip of steak, he also didn’t say _no_.  
  
“Tell me more about my dad,” Audrey demanded.  
  
And so he did.  
  
…  
  
It was nearly ten, when Audrey’s phone rang.  
  
He didn’t have to be listening in on the conversation to get the gist of it; even with her leaving the table and heading out to the foyer of the restaurant. It climbed in pitch, until finally Audrey snapped, “Whatever; like you’d even _notice_ ” and then, with inaccurate, harried fingers, hung up again.  
  
She slumped back down in the seat across from him, said nothing for a long moment, and then said, “My mother is a _bitch_.”  
  
Finn smiled unwillingly.  “Yeah.  She always kind of was one.”  
  
“She’s--going to ruin my life, you know.  She doesn’t want me to move to a big city.  Especially not New York, for some reason, and it’s like--who are you to control me like that?  It drives me _crazy_.  I don’t know--I mean, if she was so set on ruining my life why did she even take me away to begin with?  Is my dad like-- _violent_?  Is he a bad person or something?” Audrey blurted out, in one big pleading question.  
  
Finn sighed and said, “No, he’s a good guy.  Always was.”  
  
Audrey stared at the table darkly, and then said, “You know what?   _Fuck_ her.  I want to go with you to Ohio and meet him.  My dad, I mean.”  
  
“Are you sure?” he asked, looking at her carefully.  “That’s a huge thing--”  
  
“Oh, my God, you have no idea how relieved I am that I’m related to someone who isn’t her.  I mean, seriously, unless my dad is like, a serial pedophile or something, it can’t _possibly_ be worse.  Maybe he can--I don’t know.  Support me?  And help me do something awesome with my life?”  The ponytail was tightened again, and then Audrey just looked at Finn for a long moment, before tilting her head and narrowing her eyes.  “I mean, yeah, I guess you could be a total creep--”  
  
“I’m not,” Finn said, pointlessly.  
  
“It doesn’t really matter, anyway.  If something terrible happens to me, maybe she’ll finally give a shit about me, or something.”  
  
Finn felt his breath catch in his throat, but finally looked at his watch and said, “We should probably--not go tonight.  It’s a long drive.  I’m tired, and it’s just not a good idea.”  
  
Audrey licked at her lips for a moment and then nodded.  “Yeah, that’s fine.  I mean, I should probably go home and get some clothing or whatever.  Um--can you get me at school tomorrow?  I’ll check in at homeroom and then sneak out again.  It’ll make it easier, nobody will know I’m gone until like... you know, a day later.”  
  
Finn smiled faintly, at the most basic of Puck’s traits so blatantly on display, and then said, “I’ll be there.”  
  
“All right,” Audrey said, and then picked up her bag and slid out from behind the table again.  She looked at him for one more carefully long moment, when she was standing, and then headed out to her car.  
  
He lowered his head to his hands, and wondered if there was any way to prepare anyone back home for what was about to happen.  
  
Probably not.  He’d just--have to talk to them, carefully, with Audrey in the car, and make sure nobody lost their minds, so late in the game.  
  
…  
  
That night, he dreamed about something that had definitely never happened.  
  
“I forgive you,” Quinn was saying, stretched out on his old bed, with the blue check duvet and her head on her hand, arm braced at the elbow.  “I forgive you for choosing her.  I forgive you for abandoning me.  Everything is going to be just fine, Finn.  You’ll see.”  
  
He woke up when his phone rang, and groggily put it to his ear.  
  
“It’s been two days, man; are you--are you on your way back yet?” Puck asked, sounding tired and not entirely sober, and Finn wondered how many bottles of beer there were on the back wall in the back yard, by now.    
  
Sometimes, Puck liked shooting them off, but the gun shots scared the hell out of Rachel, so most of the time, he just pelted rocks at them, and watched them topple over.  
  
Every single one of those bottles was named Quinn.  
  
“I’m on my way back today.  I’ll be there by night,” he said, running his hand along his face and feeling the stubble there.  Man; not boy.  
  
Quinn had hated his stubble.  Rachel sometimes said she’d like it if he grew a beard, because it would bring out the kindness in his eyes, or something.  
  
He liked it at five o’clock, personally.  A little bit of both.  
  
Puck was silent on the line, and then said, “You sure?”  
  
“Yeah.  And be home, please.  I have to talk to you both,” Finn added, rubbing at his eyes.  
  
“About?”  
  
“Just--be there,” Finn said, and hung up before Puck could ask any other questions.  
  
There wasn’t any way to do this but in person, like a slap in the face, and with that thought he went to take a cold shower before checking out of the motel and eating some bacon and eggs at the Denny’s, before heading back out to Sacred Hearts.  
  
…  
  
For one long moment, in the parking lot there, he thought that Audrey had changed her mind.  
  
But then, long after the first bell rang, the front doors to the school swung open, and she strode out, in her cheerleading uniform and with a red ribbon in her hair.  
  
It was--  
  
He closed his eyes, until he stopped seeing someone who wasn’t there (and wasn’t sixteen, and wasn’t rounded in the hips like that) and then got out of the car.  
  
“My friends know I’m with you, and that we’re going to Lima, Ohio,” Audrey said, carefully, coming to a halt in front of him.  “Okay?”  
  
He nodded as seriously as he could, and then said, “Do you have any particular kind of music you like, for long drives?”  
  
She chewed on the corner of her mouth and then flipped her pony over her shoulder, and looked him square in the eye and said, “I like all sorts of music, but there’s nothing like country when you’re driving around these podunk parts, is there?”  
  
Once upon a time, during a particularly good spell in their relationship, Quinn had pulled him off her bed and into a clumsy slow dance while she crooned _Crazy_ at him, which was so much funnier and sadder, after the fact.  
  
“Do you like Patsy Cline?” he asked, when they pulled out of the parking lot.  
  
Audrey was fastening her seat belt and then shot him a look, her eyebrows knitting together.  “Who?”  
  
“Never mind,” he said, with a brief shake of his head; then, he found a modern country station, where artists he’d never heard of sang off their regrets, one at a time.  
  
…  
  
Audrey was quiet for the first hour of the drive, and then turned in her seat to face him and said, “What’s Ohio like?”  
  
Finn overtook a slow-moving station wagon in the right lane and then shrugged lightly.  “I guess it’s not much different from Wisconsin.  I mean, Lima’s no Madison, don’t get me wrong; it’s a small town.  We all know each other’s business.”  
  
Audrey glanced back out the window, at a field full of grazing cows--the thirtieth, at Finn’s count--and then said, “So it must’ve been a pretty big deal; my mom up and leaving like that.”  
  
“It was,” Finn said, as plainly as he could.  
  
“People still talk about it?”  
  
He hesitated, and then shook his head.  “Not really, no.  I guess it’s one of those things where--it’s better to just not talk about it, but...”  
  
“Can’t really forget about it, can you?” Audrey said, and rubbed at her cheeks for a few seconds.  “It’s like not having a dad.  I mean, I don’t know a thing--I guess I know a few, now, but you never really stop thinking about it anyway.”  
  
Finn nodded slowly.  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”  
  
The car was silent for another long stretch of time, until Audrey said, “Don’t off-road, or anything, but--you’re not.... _him_ , are you?”  
  
Finn looked at her in surprise and then said, “Him--”  
  
“My dad.”  
  
Fuck.  
  
He took a deep breath and looked at her for a moment, and then lowered his eyes.  “No, I’m not.  Or, well, _Noah Puckerman_ is, but I’m not him.”  
  
Audrey looked at him sharply for a moment and then said, “Okay, pull the fuck over, right now. What--”  
  
He did, as soon as it was safe for them to, and then watched her struggle with the door handle before putting an arm on her shoulder.  
  
“Don’t _touch_ me, you pervert,” she lashed out at him, swatting his hand away.  
  
“I wanted to see if his name _meant_ anything to you, okay?” Finn blurted out, even as Audrey kept on clawing at his arm.  
  
It took another ten seconds, but then she sort of sank back against the door and clutched her own arms to her chest.    
  
Finn took a deep breath and moved as far away from her as he could.  “I just--I thought maybe your mom would’ve told you about him and you’d recognize his name, which would’ve made this a hell of a lot easier.  I mean, she could’ve just told you he’d died, or something.”  
  
Audrey burst into tears without warning, and he stared at her helplessly before pointing at the glove box.  
  
“My wife, Rachel, she keeps a lot of wipes in there.  She’s kind of obsessed with being clean.  I guess she’s kind of a germaphobe but I mean, it comes in handy at times like this.”  When Audrey still didn’t move, he stared at his own lap and said, “My name is Finn.  Finn Hudson. I--dated your mom in high school.  Your dad never did.  You were the result of a one night stand--”  
  
At Audrey’s even more horrified look, he closed his eyes and rubbed at his face.  
  
“Sorry, but--no more lies, okay?  I don’t want to lie to you and this was all a really long time ago.  Puck and your mom hooked up when she and I were dating, and for the longest time I was convinced you were mine.  Until the truth came out, but--I thought you were mine for like, five months. I had a name picked out for you and everything.”  
  
Audrey sucked in a deep breath, and then popped the glove box and felt around for some Kleenex, dabbing it at her eyes.  “God, my make-up is going to be trashed.”  
  
“You’ll still look pretty.  Sorry, that’s not supposed to sound creepy--you just are,” Finn said, stiltedly.  “You’re like your mom that way.  Even at her worst, she always looked her best.”  
  
Audrey balled up the Kleenex and studied him for a long moment, and then said, “What were you going to name me?”  
  
He hesitated, but then mumbled, “Drizzle.”  
  
After a few seconds of dead silence, she started laughing and said, “That’s awful.  That’s--what even is that?”  
  
“Light rain,” he said, hazarding a smile when she laughed again.  “I was a little overwhelmed at the idea of becoming a dad, okay.  It felt meaningful at the time.”  
  
Audrey shook her head, and then said, “So--what happened?  With you and my mom, I mean?”  
  
“We broke up when... well, you know.  She cheated on me.  And then lied to me about the baby.”  He bit his lip for a moment.  “We had a second go at dating, a year later, and... it was better that time.  I mean, a lot of the time, anyway.  I think that--if things had been different, and sophomore year had never happened, it could’ve worked. But... there was always Rachel, and--”  
  
He trailed off, because this was all way too complicated to discuss when they hadn’t even managed to make it to Illinois yet, and it wasn’t all that important to Audrey anyway.  Not compared to what they’d find in Lima.  
  
Her smile slipped away slowly, and then she just said, “So--you and my dad--”  
  
“He’s my best friend.  He lives with us,” Finn said.  
  
Audrey nodded, and then looked out the window.    
  
Finn sighed.  “Look, I know this is all really screwed up.  Do you want to go back?  Because I don’t want to--”  
  
“No,” Audrey said, but without much conviction, and the pressed her head against the glass.  “I mean, you might not be my dad but you’re taking me to him, right?  And I want to go.”  
  
“Okay,” Finn said, when there was nothing else forthcoming.  
  
When he pulled back onto the road, Audrey briefly glanced at him and said, “I know you can’t like, actually leave me alone, but I have a lot to think about and--I don’t know.  Can we be quiet?”  
  
Finn turned the radio to a softer volume and then said, “Yeah, sure.”  
  
He’d primarily had the company of his own thoughts for the better part of fifteen years.  A few more hours of it wouldn’t kill him, and on that note, he sent a text to Rachel that they were making good time, and that he’d like Mexican for dinner.  
  
Quinn had loved Mexican food. Puck didn’t mind it. The odds were, Beth would fall somewhere in the middle.  
  
…  
  
They were almost halfway to home when he finally ventured, “You hungry?”  
  
Audrey didn’t immediately respond, but then unfolded her legs--with grace, like a dancer; like _Quinn_ \--and carefully looked at him.  “Guess this being the most messed up day of my life is no excuse for not eating, huh?”  
  
There was a McDonald’s coming up in about a mile and a half, he knew from the drive over, and even though Quinn would’ve killed him for taking her there, this wasn’t actually Quinn.  “If you’re not hungry, I get it, but you’re an adult and I have to at least y’know, offer.”  
  
A small noise escaped from Audrey’s mouth at that.  “You sound like a teacher.”  
  
“I _am_ a teacher,” he said.  
  
She snorted at that, and then said, “McDonald’s salads aren’t all that bad anymore, y’know, after all that campaigning when I was a child.  My mom used to refuse to take me there but she’s eased up on it a lot now that they’re meeting all those pyramid requirements.”  
  
It sounded fairly typical, and this was his last chance to eat a burger without feeling guilty about it as well, and so he pulled over at the exit and parked the car as far away from the restaurant as he could.  He figured they could both use the fresh air, and as Audrey hesitated before getting out of the car, he gave her a twenty second head start.  
  
The amount of crap he’d dropped on her, he was surprised she was still standing.  
  
Except he wasn’t really, when he thought about the amount of crap the universe had dropped on Quinn, and she’d never gone down without a fight, either.  
  
…  
  
“Tell me about Lima,” she demanded, stabbing at a green bean in her salad.  “I mean, is is like the sixth circle of hell?”  
  
He smiled and picked the onions off his cheeseburger.  “Not really, I mean.  It’s home to me.  I’ve lived there my entire life.  I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.  But, if you think Wisconsin’s too small for you... I guess you’re kind of like Rachel, y’know, my wife.  She always wanted to go to New York.”  
  
“So why didn’t you?” Beth asked, before crunching down loudly on some salad leaves.  Her eyes were sharp on him, and he felt uncomfortably like a seventeen year old boy out of nowhere, having to justify his lack of ambition to a girlfriend who viewed Lima as nothing more than a trap.  
  
“We just--life just sort of got in the way,” he said, taking a bite of his burger before she could ask anything else.  By the time he’d swallowed, he’d come up with enough to add to that to distract her.  “And besides, Lima might not be anything special but the show choir team we have there--”  
  
“Yeah, _New Directions,_ right?” Audrey asked, wiping at her mouth with her rumpled paper napkin.  “I thought your song choices were super lame but your singers were pretty good.  Plus your choreography was different, y’know?”  
  
He couldn’t help but smile at her.  “That’s because--back when Rachel and I were in high school, we lost nationals in our senior year because--” _your mother stole you and we were all fucking scrambling to just hold on_ “--we worked so hard on our songs that we didn’t spend nearly enough time thinking about the choreography.  I mean, you’ve seen _Vocal Adrenaline_ \--”  
  
Audrey made a face.  “They’re--um--”  
  
“Assholes?” he suggested.  “Evil?”  
  
Her cheeks dimpled after a moment, much like Puck’s would when he laughed, and then she just chuckled and said, “Well, if it’s all right by you, Teach, then yeah.  They’re such bitches.  Even the boys.  But the way they dance--”  
  
“Rachel’s mother used to coach them.  When they took Nationals six years in a row, actually, she was--”  
  
Audrey’s eyes widened at that.  “Wait, Rachel’s mother is _Shelby Corcoran?_ ”  
  
He looked down at his burger a little sheepishly.  “Yeah. That’s the one.  I didn’t realize--well, I guess I did, I mean, she’s like the Sue Sylvester of show choir...”  
  
“The who?”  
  
He shook his head.  “Never mind.”  
  
Audrey poked at her salad a few times and then her fork froze, mid-air.  “Didn’t--Shelby Corcoran have a nervous breakdown and land in some sort of mental home because she got fired from teaching at Carmel?”  
  
He felt his spine go rigid before he could stop it, and the burger slipped from his fingers--limp, now--and landed with a splat on his tray.  “She--that’s a really short hand explanation and no, she didn’t get fired from Carmel, she didn’t work at Carmel anymore when she... when she got sick.”  
  
Audrey had the common sense to read enough into his tone to just take a sip of water and give him a small, unrecognizable smile.  “That’s--I’m really sorry.  I mean, I know I complain about my mom basically constantly, and I do think she’s trying to ruin my life, but--nobody should have to deal with that.”  
  
He stared at his burger, and then just sank back in the booth they were in.  “We manage.  We manage okay.  I think that’s the best thing I can say about all of Lima.  It’s not--special.  It’s just where we live, and we manage okay.”  
  
When she nodded and continued eating, he watched her, and tried to decide if he meant that or if he was just trying to soften the blow of what she’d find when they got back.  
  
…  
  
It was still incredibly light out by the time they crossed the state border into Ohio again, and Audrey was starting to shake a little next to him.  He turned the music back on, in an attempt to give her something to focus on, but after about twenty miles she put a hand on his arm and said, “I think I’m going to be sick.”  
  
He pulled over as fast as he could and then leaned over the console to hold her hair back while she threw up outside of the open door, and then let go of it quickly when she sat up straight again.  
  
Seeing her throw up was the strangest of all.  He’d seen Quinn do it more times than he could count, and had spent nearly four months on his knees behind her, telling her that it’d be okay and it was normal, that she’d get through this.  
  
These weren’t thoughts he needed to burden Audrey with, though, and so instead he said, “Rachel also has a collection of mints in the glove box, so--”  
  
Audrey tried to smile, or laugh, or something but just ended up pressing her hands into her eye sockets with a shudder.  “I’m sorry, it’s just starting to hit me what we’re doing and I’m freaking out a little.  And I know that if I’m not back in the next few hours my mom is going to start calling--”  
  
“So she _does_ care,” Finn asked, looking at her carefully.  
  
Audrey rolled her eyes.  “She’s not--yeah.  She cares.  She’s just never there, and we don’t get along, and now I’m in fucking _Ohio_ \--sorry, I mean, now I’m in _Ohio_ and--”  
  
“Shit, don’t cry,” Finn said, as Audrey started crying the way Quinn used to--quietly and just with streams running from her eyes, like rivers, rivers that overflowed.  He fumbled with the glove box and then split a packet of Kleenex open with his hands, letting them fall everywhere, until he finally grabbed hold of one and pressed it against Audrey’s face.  Her cheeks trembled against his, but she was letting him pat her face dry and--had Quinn ever let him come this close?  Would Puck ever let someone see him like this, without also throwing a punch later?  
  
The last Kleenex also fell from his hands, and he stared at her helplessly.  “If you want to go back, we can, but then I have to--call some people and--”  
  
“Like my father,” she said, in a broken little voice.  “You’d have to call my father and tell him I didn’t want to see him, when I was this close.”  
  
Finn swallowed thickly and then said, “He’d understand.”  
  
She stared straight ahead, into the slowly setting sun, and then shook her head.  “If he was this close and didn’t come to see me I’d hate him for the rest of my life.  It’s--I’ll be okay.  I can handle this.”  
  
He hesitated, and then put a hand on her shoulder.  “Hey, I know we met like a day ago, and I’m just some creepy old guy who told you a bunch of crazy shit, but I’m _on your side_ , okay?”  
  
Audrey glanced over, her mascara tracking slowly down her cheeks, and then bit her lip and nodded.  
  
She didn’t thank him, which was good; he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to stop himself from crying if she had.  
  
…  
  
The town limits felt like a gaping maw, ready to swallow him whole, when he drove back through them.  Audrey was knitting her hands into the fabric of the seat, and staring ahead mutely, deadly pale and breathing with a hitch.    
  
He’d stopped trying to comfort her about half an hour earlier, when it was clear that nothing he could possibly say would make this better; instead he’d just hammered his foot down on the gas, breaking a few traffic laws, because it wasn’t as if those _mattered_ right now.  
  
Not with what else was about to happen.  
  
His heart was pounding out of his chest, making his temples pulse, by the time he pulled up on their street; the kitchen light was on, he could tell, which meant Rachel was cooking the Mexican meal he’d ordered.  Puck’s pick-up, tail light still cracked, was in the drive, and so they were all there.  It was barely five forty five, and this was going to happen, right now.  
  
A sharp pain shot up his left arm and he stared at it in shock, before just shaking it out when he realized he was gripping the wheel hard enough to be straining his forearm muscles.  Then, he just let the car roll to a halt in front of the house, and looked at Audrey.  
  
“Are you--I mean, you’re obviously not ready, because nobody would be--” he started saying, and she stared at him sharply before swinging the door open and stepping out.  
  
He hustled out of the car after her, pulling his coat from the back seat and then watching as she mounted the porch steps and rang the door bell; and he turned around and used the remote to lock the car up, and then spun a second time when the door opened and Puck stared at Audrey in surprise.  
  
“Can I help you?” he asked, carefully, before glancing up and seeing Finn.  “Dude, what--”  
  
Audrey’s entire frame froze, and Finn stepped in behind her and said, “Let’s--we need to all be sitting down for this, I think.  Can you get--”  
  
Rachel appeared around the corner, peering around Puck, saying, “Hey, hon; I made enchiladas, I know you--”, but then she too fell silent at the sight of Audrey, shaking like a leaf, her eyes flitting between the adults in front of her.  
  
“I think I found her,” Finn finally said, the words leaving his lungs in a shaky sigh.  It didn’t sound as convinced as he’d wanted it to, but Puck’s eyes shot up towards him, before his entire face crumpled, and Rachel’s hands shot up to her mouth in shock.  “I know, I know--”  
  
“Oh, my God, baby, what have you done?” Rachel asked, in an almost unrecognizable tone of voice, as Puck slumped against the door frame, a look of unending horror on his face, before he pulled out his phone and called the police.  
  
…  
  
He didn’t understand.  
  
Rachel led him to the couch and sat him down, and then talked to Audrey in the hallway, pinning the girl in place with hands on her shoulders; Audrey looked like she couldn’t understand what was happening, but then Rachel just pulled her into a hug and said, “I’m so sorry”, in a voice so broken that it reminded him of all the songs she didn’t sing anymore.  
  
What was happening to the enchiladas?  And where had Puck gone?  
  
He waited, because Rachel had asked him to, but shot to his feet again when Audrey disappeared from sight, and it was only Rachel’s hand pressing gently into his chest that kept him from going after her.  
  
“No, don’t let her--why are you letting her _leave_ ,” he demanded, staring at Rachel in disbelief.  “It took me _fifteen years to find her_ \--”  
  
Rachel took hold of his hands, gently, and tangled their fingers together--they way they used to do, all the time, back when things were right--and then started walking him backwards towards the couch.  “Sit with me for a moment, okay?”  
  
He frowned at her but let her push him back into the cushions, and after a moment of hesitating, she crawled onto the couch on her knees, next to him--and cupped his face with both hands and looked at him with an expression so devastated that he felt his breath catch.  
  
“I know that you can’t remember this.  I know that--” she started saying, but her voice cracked on the last words and she lowered her eyes for a moment, her thumb rubbing his cheek, until her eyes raised again.  “I know that I’m going to have to show you, just like I did the last time, and--oh, God, Finn, I thought you were--”  
  
“Rachel, what is happening?” he finally asked, when tears flooded her eyes again and she just stared and stared at him.  “Why are you all so angry that I brought Beth back?”  
  
He could see Rachel’s throat bob, when she swallowed, and she wiped the sleeve of her button-down shirt past her eyes quickly, and then looked at him openly.  
  
“Finn, Beth died fifteen years ago.”  
  
…  
  
The water in the bathtub was hotter than he liked.  It was Rachel hot; the temperature he ran it to when she needed a bath, and he pulled his knees up to his chest to get them out of the water, more than anything.  
  
The police was gone.  
  
So was Audrey.  
  
Puck and Rachel were yelling at each other in the hallway, and he could hear what they were saying but he couldn’t really make sense of any of it.  
  
“Rachel, I know you love him--”  
  
“And so do you, Noah,” Rachel snapped back at Puck.  A fist hit a wall.  
  
“We can’t--he actually _took a girl_ this time, so God only knows what he’s going to do next, but it’s not enough anymore, okay?  You faking a search just so he doesn’t--so that we don’t have to keep him locked in his room at all time, having Bob and Ryan show up with fake reports every month just so--and now we're even pretending that he’s the choir teacher just because it makes him feel like _time has moved on_ \--”  
  
Rachel was crying audibly now.  “What do you suggest we do?  Put him in with my _mother_?”  
  
“Well, _why the fuck not?_ ” Puck yelled at her.  “It’s where he fucking belongs, Rachel!”  
  
He wiggled his toes in the water and watched it swirl around them, and then slid down the tub, until his head was underwater and his feet were scaling the tiles behind the tub, and he couldn’t hear anything anymore.  Just low, warbled noises, and he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, this would all be fine.  
  
…  
  
And it was.  
  
Except that when he exited the bathtub, and looked at his best friend and his ex-wife, they both stared at him like the world had gone and ended on them all over again.  
  
He pulled them both into a hug, towel snug around his waist, and then kissed the top of Rachel’s head.  
  
“I know,” he said, because he did.  
  
He might not have been anything to Beth, really, but he missed her as much as they both did.  
  
...  
  
Rachel started toweling off his hair, once he’d left the tub and sat down on the edge of the bed with it ready, and he smiled at her, putting a hand on her arm.  “I can get that.”  
  
She sucked in a deep breath, but let go of the towel.  “I know you can.”  
  
He watched as she sat down on the edge of the bed that they’d probably be sharing tonight, if the look on her face was anything to go by, and then she just reached for his hand and rubbed his ring finger.  
  
“What is it, babe?” he asked, gently.  “Is--did you have a bad day?”  
  
Rachel mashed her lips together and stared off into the distance, and then just settled into his side and said, “Let’s not talk about my day.  Let’s just--”  
  
…  
  
She cried, when they made love that night, and pulled on his hair a little too hard when she finally climaxed, and he brushed his thumbs under her cheeks.  
  
“I know life isn’t perfect,” he then murmured.  “And that this Beth thing weighs on us all heavily--”  
  
Her breath hitched, and her eyes widened, and he shook his head, shushing her.  
  
“But I’m always here for you, Rachel.  No matter what, okay?  Whenever you’re ready to start living life for you again, I’ll be right there to support you.”  
  
He watched as her eyes squeezed shut, tightly, and then she leaned up and kissed him so softly he barely felt it.  
  
“I know,” she exhaled, right against his lips, and then pulled his head down onto her chest.  
  
They slept.  
  
…  
  
He was frying some hash browns and making an omelette the next day when Puck and Rachel came downstairs and flanked him on either side.  
  
“Hey,” he said, holding out his fist for Puck to bump; Puck’s own hand hit gently.  “We all right again?”  
  
Puck nodded, glancing at the floor for a moment, and then said, “Finn--we just have one question for you.  What happened to Quinn and Beth?”  
  
He fumbled the frying pan and then turned off the stove, because what the hell kind of question was that to ask without warning?  When they _all_ knew they couldn’t talk about this?  
  
“She--dude, why are you asking me this?” he asked, feeling his shoulders droop.  “I mean, that’s like--”  
  
Rachel’s hand pressed against his back warmly.  “It’s okay, honey, just answer his question.”  
  
Finn gulped a few times and then stared at Puck tentatively.  “Well, she--she took Beth.  And left the state, and now--”  
  
“What happened in December of 2012, Finn?” Puck asked, with a deep sigh, shoving his hands into his pockets.  
  
Finn blinked at him furiously.  “I don’t know, we--it was Christmas?  Our first Christmas here, and um, Rachel and I talked about making a family together but couldn’t because--”  
  
Puck’s expression fell, and he rubbed at his face.  “Okay, get your coat.”  
  
“Noah, I really don’t think he can--”  
  
“He _has_ to,” Puck said, firmly, before tossing his keys at Finn.  “You can drive.”  
  
“Um,” Finn said, and looked over his shoulder at Rachel, whose lip was trembling.  “Where are we going?”  
  
“The cemetery,” Puck said, shortly.  
  
…  
  
He stared at the tombstone and just--  
  
“Why would anyone have done this?”  
  
Puck stared at the sky overhead, filling with clouds and unexpectedly gray for the time of the year, and shoved his hands deeper in his pockets.  
  
“They did it because--she and Beth were in a car crash in December 2013, over in Illinois, where she’d taken her.  They found two driving licenses on her; one for a Melissa Smith, and another one for Lucy Fabray, which is how they linked it to us.”  
  
Finn reeled.  “But--”  
  
“She’s been dead for nearly sixteen years, Finn,” Puck said, quietly.  “And so has--”  
  
“ _No_ ,” Finn snapped, taking a step backwards and almost tripping over another grave.  “Don’t--”  
  
He ran.  
  
…  
  
He couldn’t--  
  
It wasn’t--  
  
…  
  
He just needed to find them, and then this would all go away.  
  
…  
  
Rachel sat down across from him, and held his hand tightly.  “So you understand, right?”  
  
He rubbed at his forehead for a moment.  “Well, yeah, but--why can’t she come live with us again?”  
  
“Because we don’t have the space, baby, and someone really needs to be with _her_ while she’s getting the help she needs,” Rachel said, rubbing her thumb across his knuckles.  “And we--we thought you would be the best, because of--of what a wonderful man you are.”  
  
He felt his cheeks heat up unexpectedly.  “Um, Rachel, she’s your _mother_.  I don’t think that’s--”  
  
“I meant how--compassionate you are,” she said, quietly, and stared at the wooden table in what was going to be his new temporary bedroom, until Shelby got just a little bit better.  “You’re--you care more than anyone I know, Finn.  About all of us.  You have, for the last sixteen years.”  
  
There was a hint of something in her voice that he couldn’t read, but he ducked his head down until she made eye contact with him, and then gave her a smile that he meant from the bottom of his heart.  “You’ve always been worth it, Rach.  I know--things between us didn’t work out--”  
  
Her jaw muscles clenched, just for a moment, and then she darted forward and kissed him.  “They weren’t what--what I expected.  But I wouldn’t give them up for anything.”  
  
He smiled at that, and ran a hand through her hair, and then leaned back in his chair and looked around.  “Well, I mean, it’s not our bedroom but it could be worse.  Do you remember that cabin in the woods that Burt and my mom thought--”  
  
She laughed, the skin around her eyes crinkling, and then rested her cheek in her hand and smiled at him.  “Yeah.  I remember.”  
  
Something was nagging at the back of his mind; something that he really felt he had to remember, but the longer he looked at Rachel, the less coherent it became, and ultimately he just came back to the same thing that he’d thought every time he’d looked at her, for the last sixteen years.  
  
One day, she’d actually get over the fact that Beth and Quinn were missing, and had left them in this lurch--and her voice would sound stronger than ever.  
  
No pressure, though, and so he just raised his eyebrows at her.  
  
“You up for a game of Yahtzee, before you go?”  
  
She smiled.


End file.
